If you can't wait for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to return in the fall, Marvel Comics has the answer, as the comic book tie-in series is well underway. In the next issue, fan favorites Melinda May and Bobbi Morse aka Mockingbird band together to fight an army of surgically "enhanced" children.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. series is engaging in an intriguing conceit in which writer Mark Waid is paired with a different art team each week. For this issue, he is joined by penciler Paco Medina, inker Juan Vlasco, and colorist David Curiel. The art from the preview pages looks beautiful, although Mockingbird is a little too sexualized for my comfort (note that all of the artists are men).

That said, the plot is incredibly intriguing; it begins with a grieving mother identifying her teenage son in the morgue, and finding that he (disturbingly) has wings surgically attached to his back. Melinda May, Mockingbird, and Coulson provide the exposition: someone is rounding up street kids and surgically modifying them to have mutant-type superpowers. Some are hired as mercenaries, while the unlucky ones are sold as slaves. And who better to stop them than arguably the two best characters on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.?